Tempted by love

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The next two days pasted with an unfriendly blur. The heat of our intimate rage against each other was starting to shimmer down and I found a new freedom in dressing up. It had always been a favorite pastime back in high school. That morning I wore a fringed Kelly green Prada dress that I had bought at Pimpernel’s with Freya and Dixie, a multicoloured Pucci headscarf, and four-inch-high silver Manolos.  My long blonde hair was swept up into a sexy, Asian inspired bun, and I had put thick Kohl eyeliner around my eyes. If I was back in high school, I knew the other girls would be jealous, but that wasn’t the point of me dressing up today. Sometimes it was more fun to dress up when there weren’t boys around. In my case, Mason had holed himself in some corner of the house where I wouldn’t find him on purpose.        

I was trying to indulge myself in the luxuries that once fell at my feet, all taken away because of the war that was rising and my father felt the need to tuck me away in hiding. I had suppressed my want to go outside and thus took in other errands around the house extremely seriously. When I looked in the mirror I saw a girl I once used to be: fun, wild and free. I let go of a spontaneous laugh as the previous memories I had of the last time I wore this dress swarmed around me, engulfing me, taking me back in time to a place I wish I was.  

I could still remember it as fresh as a daisy, the day of Black Saturday party. I could remember the faint smell of sandal wood from the incense that burned. Being one of the popular girls in high school it was our duty to throw parties and have fun; taking amazing pictures to put up on Face-Page so other girls would know how much they were missing out on. There was no war, no fighting, and no soldiers. It was only a delusional world of glitz and glamour. Black Saturday party was a tradition. A party that always took place on the last Saturday of the year, it was incredibly cool because there was a select guest list and a wild theme.

That night, the theme was Arabian Nights. The whole room in my apartment in Manhattan had been transformed into a place that was shadowy and mysterious. My friends and I added twinkling lights, candles, Indian-styled pillows, incense, Grey Goose, mini joints, pictures of elephants and multiarmed gods around the room, and carefully placed  ancient love manuals from India, and Dixie had gotten a CD of sexy exotic Bhangra music from her DJ boyfriend, Ronald Junior. We had gotten high, painted our nails and played spin the bottle after convincing the pizza boy to play with us. We each had a turn to kiss him and share our deepest secret crushes. This green dress took me back to that time and I smiled nostalgically in the mirror. 

There was a soft knock at the door that pulled me out of my time warp, and knowing that I wasn’t alone in the house and who the other person in the house was, I moved slowly to answer the knock.

I sighed greatly when I pulled the door of my bedroom open to reveal the tall and overpowering figure of Mason Walsh standing before me. It was strange, I had to admit. That he was suddenly at my door, requesting my presence. A strange gesture he hadn’t done since being placed under house arrest with me. My heart started to flutter when my conclusions drew on to a hopeful apology to emerge from the tip of his tongue.   

Instead of hearing an ‘I’m sorry for being a dick’, Mason totally surprised me by saying, “Uh, I hope I am not disturbing you, but I made lunch for us today. You’ve been making the meals for us since the first day and I was kind of hoping to relieve you of the task for today, if you don’t mind.” 

“Not really no, it’s sort of nice of you to do that, I guess,” I murmured truthfully, but then I paused and remembered that we were not to be on speaking terms, “But, what makes today so special?”

“You were right,” he said shocking me with his words and taking me aback, flabbergasted with my mouth hanging open, half ajar. 

“About what?”